Mitt Doesn’t Even Know When MI’s Recession Started

I thought I was going to be all-Santorum all-the-time until the primary on February 28. Apparently Mitt has gotten the jump on Santorum, though, here with an ad that proves he knows so little about the state he was born in that he doesn’t even know when the depression here started.

The ad starts with the suggestion that people who go to the North American Auto Show–an event attended by people from all over the world–makes you a Michigander.

But it’s the word salad that comes later that is really funny.

President Obama did all these things the liberals have wanted to do for years. And the fact that you’ve got millions of Americans out of work, home values collapsing, people here in Detroit in distress. I want to make MI stronger and better. MI’s been my home.

The implication is, of course, that Obama did a bunch of liberal things–like investing in new technologies in MI–and as a consequence millions lost their jobs, home values collapsed, and people in Detroit got distressed.

There’s a big problem with that. Both unemployment and foreclosures started going up in MI well before Obama became President. Unemployment peaked in June, just 5 months after he got elected. And while home prices everywhere peaked in 2006, in MI they started falling a little ahead of the rest of the country (though I’m not about to defend Obama’s housing policies). MI actually entered this recession in 2003, not 2007.

If you blame a state’s woes on the guy who was president when those woes started (you don’t, but that’s the word salad argument he is trying to make), then Mitt should be talking about how Bush, by enacting all these things conservatives have wanted to do for years, doomed MI.

That wouldn’t be the truth, either. But at least it would reveal a passing familiarity with the recent plight of the state you’re trying to claim as home.

i always wondered why Mitt’s using his son’s unfinished basement in MA as his voting address while actually living in La Jolla doesn’t get greater play.

According to Karger’s timetable, Romney and his wife, Ann, bought a $12.5 million home in La Jolla, California, in May 2008. (“I wanted to be where I could hear the waves,” Romney told the AP of his move to the West Coast.) Thereafter, Romney became a regular at California political events, even campaigning for Meg Whitman during her gubernatorial bid. A year later, in April 2009, the Romneys sold their home in Belmont, Massachusetts, for $3.5 million, and registered to vote from an address in the basement of an 8,000 square-foot Belmont manse owned by their son Tagg.

(emphasis mine)

just the thought of Mitt & Ann hanging out in their son’s basement for two years is laughable.

I so want to see Marcy back on the MSM. More Americans and the world need access to her brilliance. I really mean this. Please go ask Chris Matthews to have her on to discuss the race in Michigan. Asking and pushing really does work with some of these characters. I know this from several successes at getting folks on a few national news programs

One thing that Chris Matthews said tonight that is so true “the media (especially host on MSNBC) are cheering for Santorum (last month it was Gingrich) because they don’t want to be bored” If Romney knocks the other contenders out. Tonight on Hardball Fineman and Matthews were almost gushing over Santorum. Saying something about him being so sincere. Aye yi yi